But For Oceans Where Feet May Fail
by paper-rose16
Summary: Over the course of seven years Hannah Abbott loses her mother, finds courage, grows up, and watches two best friends fall in love, all the while the war continues to close in around her and every day promises to be the last.


Sometimes, when the world was falling apart around her, Hannah liked to sneak outside under the guise of her Uncle Giff's old invisibility cloak – tattered and threadbare, the charm on it worn over the decades until it was nearly unworkable – and just to think, to listen to the sound of the wind sighing around her, and to wait for an answer to come.

It's what she's doing now, walking along the edge of the silent lake, the crescent moon shaped like a smile looking down upon the still, cool waters. If she turned her head it could be a frown; it could match her own, pale and heavy and suspended on a darkly unfamiliar landscape.

It had been an unusually bad day. Every day now was bad, but this one had been especially horrible. Michael's screams had echoed in her ears till she thought herself half-mad, and the screech that the shackles made as they scraped along the cool stone dungeon floor had chilled her through to the bone. Blood had spilled everywhere, too much of it; and Terry had been so, _so_ hysterical, that Hannah didn't think she would ever get the sight of that naked terror to leave her.

She walks along the stony shore of the water, stopping only once to skip a smooth perfect rock over its mirror surface, and lets her mind wander. The Carrows would kill her if they knew …

* * *

I.

It started how it always had, ever since that first Muggle Studies class where Neville – so much more handsome, and brave, and just _more _somehow of everything – had stood up, tall and proud and everything Hannah had always known he could be, and said, _No_.

No, I won't believe you. No, you're full of lies and spite and hate. No, I won't torture an innocent third year whose only crime was to forget his homework. Just, _no_.

And they were all behind him, because it was the right thing to do. And if ever she forgot it for a moment she could just remember that girl, Marietta Edgecombe, during the year of Umbridge, and how much easier it might be to just bow and take the coward's way out.

And it was what Harry, Hermione and Ron would have done. That thought alone was enough steel her resolve.

So when Neville approached her – shyly, always so shy even after so much else of him had changed – and asked her if she might maybe, possibly want to help him reform the D.A. (he was asking too much, he knew, _but it really wouldn't be right without you, Hannah_) she had smiled and told him, _Yes. I would._

* * *

II.

She is eleven years old and standing in the Great Hall for the very first time, waiting for the stern-faced Deputy Headmistress to call her name.

She doesn't have to wait for long.

_Abbott, Hannah!_

And oh god, oh merlin, but that's her! Her knees are shaking like twigs as she takes her first wobbly steps up to the Sorting Hat. It looks entirely out of place and completely at home there at the same time; and her hand drifts up to tug nervously on the end of one of her long yellow plaits as she replaces it on the stool.

McGonagall drops the old hat firmly upon her head. Hannah tries to think of something clever to say, because it feels appropriate at a time like this, this one little moment which could define the next seven years of her life. Her father would say that hard work and family are key, but she can't quite see how they would do in a situation such as this.

The faces looking out at her from the Hufflepuff table are cheerful and kind, all that her father described. Her new housemates welcome her with open arms and Hannah Abbott doesn't feel so lonely now at all.

* * *

III.

She had fancied herself a little bit in love with Michael Corner, once.

He asked her to the Yule Ball and at first she only said yes because Neville was … well, being _Neville_ about it all. But then they danced under the sparkling fairy lights while the band played slowly in the background and Hannah thought, _I could really do this for a while now_, all thoughts of shy, sweet Neville Longbottom temporarily cast aside.

He smiled and danced and made her feel like a real-life princess. He left to go get them both drinks and she had been so caught up in the magic of the night, it wasn't until nearly an hour had passed and Susan pointing out that he really should have been back a while ago now, that she first started to worry.

She found them together in an unlit corridor just outside of the Great Hall. Michael's back was to her and he was holding the other person with him tight and intimately against the wall. A large, rough hand tugged on his hair, his face buried deep in the other person's neck, and the moans that he made as his kisses moved up the exposed throat were loud in the sudden stillness.

She couldn't stifle her gasp in time and then her gaze met his, his pupils dark, lust-blown and pleading, over his shoulder.

She stumbled back as he lurched towards her. His hands, which just moments ago had been around another, held onto her shoulders like a drowning man.

"Hannah. Hannah, _please_ …"

But his desperate words never reached her ears; she was already halfway gone, running, running, running … gone. The image of Michael's tears and other boy's tense, pale face burned forever behind her eyes.

She never tells another soul in the years to come what she saw. She half forgets about it herself, and by that time next year, she's got other things to worry about.

But not even a month after she passes him holding hands with Ginny Weasley in the corridors, and her guilt only builds.

* * *

IV.

In the year that follows, she finds herself angry. Angry at Michael, a little bit, but mostly at herself. She let herself get carried away in dreams and fairy tales in favour of a harsher reality, and now she's paying the price.

She feels helpless, just sitting here dumbly, as Dumbledore lets the ministry interfere. School is no longer the safe harbour it once was, and she just needs to do _something_, anything to show that she is still in control.

She also knows that Michael has been avoiding his best friend, and she feels guilty about that too.

So she learns to fight. To unleash that energy inside of herself into something good. She learns to be more than what she was; she is no longer just a Hufflepuff, trodden over and overlooked. War is coming, and she will be there to meet it when it does.

* * *

V.

She is freshly sixteen and her mother has just been killed.

Her dad is waiting for her in Professor Sprout's office when she gets the news. The Headmaster is there, too, and Dumbledore looks so tired and solemn and just … diminished somehow that she almost wants to comfort him. But that would be ridiculous.

Her relationship with her mother could never be mistaken for an easy one. Her mother was the type of witch who prided herself on being a true Gryffindor, loud and courageous and full of an unquenchable fire of which Hannah grew up longing to emulate. Gabby Abbott was a fierce woman who could never get over the fact of her only daughter being anything but proud and fierce, too.

But still, she goes home. Her brother is eight years old and scared of the shadows in the dark; her father is thirty-nine and lost. Hannah spends the rest of her sixth year looking after them: she comforts little Robbie when his night terrors keep him up at night, holding him safe while his fragile child's body heaves with heavy sobs for his mum, holding the three of them together in a puzzle meant to fit four. And the whole time she hears mere snippets of what's happening at Hogwarts and of the escalating war outside, watered down facts and not nearly enough of them, but just enough so she longs again for the days of secret meetings and charmed galleons and someone else telling her what to do and how to survive.

* * *

VI.

She goes back for her seventh year and everything has changed. Snape may be Headmaster, but it's the Carrows who truly rule at Hogwarts now.

Amycus is droning on again about the intricate brilliance of the Cruciatus Curse, but Hannah isn't listening. She thinks it's probably only Slytherins now who do. And maybe the First Years, those innocent babes, who hadn't had a whole previous year's education to learn that there was any other way. She thinks about how there's a whole new generation, fresh and young, with minds like sponges, who drink up everything around them like its water, how they're being corrupted day after day, believing in what they're told because nobody's shown them yet how to choose.

Choose what they believe. Choose what they'll become.

Hannah's not brave like a Gryffindor. She doesn't know what it's like to have the courage to sit and scorn openly at every virulent lie dripping like venom from the enemy's mouth, to lounge back in her chair during class and stare out the window like the Carrows aren't even a speck upon her radar, to stand up and defy them to their face. To her right she knows that even now, Neville and Ginny are deep in hushed debate, and that it's as much about plotting their next move as it is about flaunting their complete and total disregard for current authority.

And Hannah's not smart like the Ravenclaws, either. She does well enough in her studies, but it's more than just answering questions correctly on a test, isn't it? It's about cleverness, too. It's the ability to sit quietly, to purposely not draw attention to yourself. Take your notes, let them believe you're soaking it all in. Padma had shown her the circled E she'd received on her Muggle Studies essay two weeks ago. A daring eleven and a half inches waxing lyrical on all the ways advances in Muggle technology had favourably contributed to Wizarding life throughout the passing decade, with the occasional occurrence of phrases like "filthy mudblood" and "magical purity" thrown in seemingly at random. She had known that they wouldn't read anything, that they perhaps _couldn't_ read anything, but that.

No, Hannah wasn't a Gryffindor and she definitely wasn't a Ravenclaw.

Neville swivels in his seat to face her and he's got that grimly determined look on his face that's been there more often than not as of late. Sitting to either side, Ginny and Luna are solid, Neville's perfect generals.

"So we've got a plan. Tell you the details later but … you up for it?"

Maybe she doesn't have the bravery of a lion, or the wisdom of an eagle. But the lines around his world-weary eyes smooth out as he smiles, and without thinking, Hannah smiles too.

It's her first of the day.

* * *

VII.

The halls explode in celebration of their triumph, of their daring_._ Everywhere, the product of that night's marauding practically screams down at them in large, bold, red letters and the cleverest of Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes booby traps the floor, lying in wait for some unsuspecting victim to set them off.

_DUMBLEDORE'S ARMY: STILL RECRUITING!_

It's stupid and childish and a hundred other different things, but when it's done, Ginny lets loose a wild peal of laughter and Seamus high-fives Lavender and Neville … well, Neville looks at her. His lips form a firm line across his chin but his eyes, his eyes are lit up like the sun.

Filch will still be scrubbing the walls a week from now and that in itself is a victory.

And by two weeks, the numbers of the D.A. will have exploded.

* * *

VIII.

Then Luna is taken off the train ride home for Christmas.

And Ginny never comes back after Easter.

With each passing month, more and more ghosts start to occupy the halls of Hogwarts, although these aren't ghosts of the transparent kind. Instead they're the sort made from solid flesh sunken in by no hope, of blank stares and hard looks, dead eyes, growing up in mind faster than the body can keep up. Neville has to scale back the efforts of the D.A., after Ginny. After Luna. Nobody wants to be next.

They managed to forget it for a while, but they're still losing, one by one by one, and there's no end in sight.

* * *

IX.

It is dinnertime and the Great Hall is deathly quiet, the only sound the scrape of silverware against china and the soft rustle of clothes.

Snape sits, straight-backed, in what she will always think of as Dumbledore's chair, and maybe she's wrong, but it seems to Hannah that the greasy-haired slime ball traitor looks even more smug than usual as he leers down at them from his throne of blood and bones. Filch and the male Carrow are suspiciously absent.

And then suddenly there's a loud commotion as the huge double doors to the Hall swing open, little Marcy Williams standing in the middle, in near hysterics as she wails.

"THEY TOOK T-TIMMY! THEY TOOK HIM! THEY TOOK MY BROTHER! TO THE DUNGEONS!"

Maybe they are just kids, fuelled by nothing more than past successes and the sweet call of angry rebellion. Perhaps it's true that they have yet to see just how far they can fall. For them, failure is almost certain.

But maybe, just maybe … it's what will also save them.

* * *

X.

Another D.A. meeting over and this one more serious than most. Neville, who once would have spent those two hours shaking and stumbling over his words, is tall and confident and a man that every one of them is proud to follow.

Hannah is to play the distraction. But as soon as Neville has finished outlining her part, she's side-tracked. Her wandering gaze is caught upon the two boys sitting stiffly beside each other, close and yet … too far apart, like a brick wall has been placed between them.

After the rest of the plans have been set, she comes out onto the seventh floor and she's not thinking about what she has to do later as she hurries farther away from the Room of Requirement. No, she's still thinking about those boys. Her mind skips back to fourth year and there's something caught there, half-remembered, behind the embarrassment and the intervening years.

She hears them before she sees them, those same two boys. Their raised voices carry out of an abandoned classroom and she stops, presses her body flat against the wall, and looks in through the cracked open door.

"_—_and I've told _you_ that I don't care! I _don't care_, Mikey, I just want _you _and I know you feel the same!"

"Look, last night was – and you … but – but we just _can't,_ alright?"

Against her better judgement, Hannah leans her head farther around the frame until she can actually see through the door and into the classroom. Terry's palms are cupping Michael's face as Michael tries and fails to look away. They're both trying not to cry.

"What happened—" says Michael, and he's clearly struggling with the words, "It was – and you know … but it was about the war … that's all, being afraid – and … and not knowing if we're both going to survive, beyond tomorrow I mean. It didn't mean anything more than that. It can't."

"Why can't it?" says Terry softly, in a trembling voice barely above a whisper. "What are you so afraid of?"

They're both silent for a long time. Hannah barely breathes as she waits, frozen in her place against the cold stone wall.

Finally, Michael whispers, "Of you. Of … of us."

"But you don't have to be. I promise. I promise you, you don't."

His right hand reaches to tentatively grab a hold of Terry's wrist, and Terry's whole face just _lifts._ There's no other word for it. It's such a private look that says so much more than Hannah can name, and suddenly, she can't stand to be there a second longer.

She doesn't see what happens next. For the second time in her life, she leaves them to each other as she runs.

But this time it's different. She understands now what it's like to rail against something you have no control over, how helpless it can make you feel. She's no fourteen-year-old child any longer, and just because you shared one dance a thousand years ago doesn't mean you're in love.

And as she runs towards Ravenclaw Tower, she thinks back and she allows herself to remember. To remember that day in September of Fifth Year when Hermione Granger came up to her outside of Ancient Runes and told her in a hushed, exited whisper what they were going to do, what they were starting, and how at first she didn't want to go.

She didn't like it, didn't want to think about the reason and necessity behind it. They were just _kids_. They weren't soldiers, they didn't train for war! Leave the fighting to the adults, she had begged, even though Hermione promised her that that really wasn't what they were trying to do. But Hannah knew it was and deep down Hermione knew it too, if the look on her face was anything to go by. But still, she agreed to at least come. And she talked Ernie and Susan and Justin into going with her. And in the end, she was glad she went because Harry obviously knew what he was doing and she could at least be sure of passing her OWLs if nothing else.

Plus, Neville was there. And the little schoolgirl inside of her squealed at the thought.

When they finally free little Timmy Williams from his chains, all of them know that it won't end with this. That they have yet to win a battle, let alone the war. Yet it feels like everything in that small moment to be able to lift the frail boy up and hold him to her chest, cradling him as his mother should be able to. It's just one moment and there's another million more to follow before they're through.

Later, after Michael takes the fall for all of them, it will be a shy, trembling Timmy Williams and his sister who will be some of the few Terry lets through to Michael's sickbed. It will be Timmy who stands nervously on his tip-toes to whisper _Thank you_ into his saviour's ear. But it's Terry who will sit there day and night, tenderly brushing the hair from Michael's eyes through the long course of healing, soothing his nightmares with just a soft press of lips. And it will be Terry whose fingers Michael clasps as he sleeps.

It will never be Hannah, who herself once dreamed of princes and eternities spent twirling under sparkling fairy lights. But she doesn't want it to be either. Who could ever stand in the way of a love like that? Who would want to?

* * *

She is there on the front lines when the Battle for Hogwarts breaks out, and she survives as too many of her friends are cut down that single fateful night. She is there to bear witness when Harry Potter finally frees them all.

She takes so many of them down in the fight that eventually she loses count, and she doesn't care. Without fear, without doubt; because in the last year alone she has seen so many more worse things than dying and already lived to tell them.

Here, now, Hannah Abbott is on the very top of the world. And in the end she never really needed her mother's bravery, after all.

Because as it turns out, she's had her own all along.


End file.
